the launch crippled the game unlike WoW which didn't have enough servers, this game needs busy servers to make the PVP driven aspects of the game work, too many servers meant low populations on many servers and the game was just empty and that meant the PVP content didn't work. I eventually moved to a high cap server and it was soo much better, but by then most of the people I knew who played it had moved away.
Is GW cursed when it comes to computer games? There have been soo many bad/mediocre games it a crying shame, as ever I hold out hope and a couple of the current games in progress look promising... fingers crossed and good luck to the team at mythic !!

I enjoyed Warhammer Online for a month or two, but there wasn't enough to keep me playing. Had some nice ideas but was a bit boring in the end. Still hoping EQ: Next will live up to the expectations.

It really is a shame, there were some good features, some borrowed by other games and some that I wish were.

-Open world quest events. To my knowledge this is the first game to implement such a feature where players could enter an event and gain rewards based on their contribution. It's now seen in Guild Wars 2, Final Fantasy XIV, and possibly others.
-World PvP that rewarded players in a meaningful manner. All too commonly world PvP is left as a sort of afterthought, instead relying on PvE content to funnel players into similar areas and hope fights broke out. Zone PvP areas and castles provided incentive for players to go into the world and fight, even at max level unlike most other games.
-Player collision. This may not have been the first or only, but it's certainly not a common feature and added greatly to the PvP system. PvP areas made effective use of this in their design with meaningful chokepoints that could literally be blocked by players.
-Movement abilities were also pioneered largely by this game and are now a staple of EQ/WoW clones. For better or worse, almost every class had some sort of knockback.
-Faction specific classes. Classes were designed to have similar counterparts on the opposite faction, but weren't identical, which I thought to be a bold move that made the game a little more interesting.
-Unique class mechanics for each pairing, and unique dual resource system. Giving each class automatically regenerating "action points" as a basic resource made even casters feel energetic and exciting, while the unique secondary resource/mechanic made all of the classes feel more diverse.
-And my favorite innovation... Dual targetting! The single most awesome thing in the game, and possibly my favorite addition to any MMO I've played so far. Being able to target a friendly unit and an enemy unit at the same time is the best thing ever. Casting a heal? It knows to go to the friendly target. Using an offensive ability? It goes to the enemy. It opens so many doors for new types of abilities, to the point that Disciple of Khaine/Warrior Priest classes couldn't exist without it. To my knowledge, no other game has borrowed this and it makes me very sad.

So goodbye WAR! If only so many other issues didn't ruin what was a great game on paper.